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Karl, What Do you think of smoking? and the proposed tobacco settlement?

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Footnotes to article by Karl Loren

--Welcomes GA Agriculture Commissioner to Senate hearing--

WASHINGTON, DC -- U.S. Senator Paul Coverdell (R-GA), a member of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, today insisted that any comprehensive tobacco settlement approved by the Congress protect tobacco growers and the many rural communities dependent on their substantial economic contribution. Coverdell made his comments during an Agriculture Committee hearing on the proposed tobacco settlement.

"It is important that any comprehensive tobacco settlement approved by this committee and the entire United States Senate include provisions which protect tobacco farmers. Georgia has a long and distinguished agriculture heritage, and one very important part of that heritage is the tobacco farmer.

"Our Nation's tobacco farmers produce the highest quality tobacco in the world. Any agreement must respect the tremendous investments they have made in their farms," Coverdell remarked in his opening statement before the Committee.

Coverdell also welcomed Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture Tommy Irvin, who offered testimony on the potential impact the proposed settlement might have on growers in Georgia and around the Nation.

"Working together, we must aim to make sure farmers have a voice in the settlement discussions and are provided some protections before any comprehensive tobacco settlement is approved by Congress," Coverdell concluded.

---

Friday, July 4, 1997

Goode pledges to stand up for tobacco farmers

BY JAMIE C. RUFF
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

DANVILLE -- Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr., flanked by farmers complaining they had no say in the proposed tobacco agreement, promised yesterday to represent their interests during congressional deliberations about the settlement.

Goode, D-5th, met with members of the Concerned Friends of Tobacco yesterday to discuss the farmers' concerns.

The group includes 300 individual members and more than 70 businesses as associate members.

Last month, attorneys general from 40 states reached a proposed $368 billion settlement with the tobacco industry.

The settlement must be passed by Congress and signed by the president.

Goode said he will continue meeting with growers to hear their concerns.

He said he will make market and price stability an issue.

C.B. Bryant, a Pittsylvania farmer and chairman of the group, said he was pleased to hear Goode's commitment.

''It just shows we are going to be in unison when we move forward,'' Bryant said.

Bryant said the farmers are concerned because the agreement makes only one reference to farmers, and that is in passing.

Meanwhile, he said, the proposal calls for millions of dollars to be set aside for sporting events that lose tobacco sponsorship.

''I feel like I might be an economic victim,'' he said.

Tobacco, the state's largest cash crop, brought in receipts totaling $186 million last year.

J.T. Davis, a member of the Concerned Friends' board of directors, said the group has prepared a packet outlining the contributions that tobacco growers make to their community and the economy.

Information in the packet also debunks some of the myths surrounding the leaf.

The packet is titled ''American Tobacco Growners: Most Misunderstood Group in America.''

''We raise tobacco, quite frankly, because it pays the bills,'' he said.

Davis said the proposal, coupled with talk of eliminating crop insurance for tobacco farmers, could bear heavily on small farmers.

In addition, Davis said many of the nation's black farmers grow tobacco, and they already feel they have been discriminated against by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's lending practices.

''This is double jeopardy for the black farmers,'' he said.

He also said about 600 American Indians are tobacco farmers.

Several tobacco farmers at the meeting said they have had no luck finding another crop that enables them to pay their bills.

The farmers also pointed out that they must use highly specialized and expensive equipment to grow tobacco.

The growers said they have been made to look like drug lords who are getting rich, while they are mostly small businessmen who are trying to survive.

''We are not the enemy,'' said Charlie Scott, a tobacco farmer in the Halifax County of Clover.

''We are hard-working people that pay our taxes. We vote regularly. Those people in Washington, they do not know us.

''If they came down here and got to know us, they would spend more time (dealing) with people on drugs than they would honest people.

''These people get up every morning and go to work to make an honest living.

''I put my children through school with tobacco. I paid my bills with tobacco. I make an honest living with tobacco.''

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Gateway Virginia

Thursday, March 2, 1998

Bill to send Camel's Joe into retirement?

The Associated Press

---

NEW YORK -- First Joe Camel -- now Old Joe?

The leading tobacco bill in Congress would force Old Joe, the Barnum & Bailey dromedary on Camel cigarette packs since 1913, to join cartoon counterpart Joe Camel in retirement.

In June, tobacco companies agreed in a pact with state attorneys general to accept a ban on cartoons and people in their ads. But the bill by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain would ban not only Joe Camel and the Marlboro man, but animals as well.

And the ban would apply to product packaging.

That's angering Camel maker RJR Nabisco, whose lawyers confirmed yesterday that the ban would erase Old Joe from Camel labels.

"The name of the brand is Camel -- that's been its name since 1913 and for 85 years it has had a camel on the package front," RJR Nabisco spokeswoman Peg Carter said. "This is simply one of the reasons why this industry has indicated it will not sign away its First Amendment rights with the McCain bill."

Camel has used the same picture on its packs since a pack of 20 sold for a dime. Lithographers based the picture on a photograph a company photographer shot of Barnum & Bailey circus camel Old Joe. The shot was taken with the animal in an unusual pose, with its nose and tail held high, because Old Joe's trainer had just whacked him on the nose for misbehaving.

Banning Old Joe would present advertisers with an unusual problem, Merrill Lynch analyst Alan Kaplan said: "How do you run a Camel ad without a camel?"

If cigarette makers make good on their threats, RJR Nabisco might not have to.

The industry Tuesday threatened it would not sign the voluntary ban on cartoons and people if Congress passes the McCain bill, which cigarette makers contend is unconstitutional.

Without the prohibition, RJR Nabisco would be free to bring back Joe Camel from voluntary retirement. The pool-playing, shades-wearing cartoon character appeared in ads as irresistible to women -- and in real life, critics say, drew young children to smoking.

---

Lugar proposes protection for tobacco farmers

By David L. Haase / The Indianapolis Star/News

WASHINGTON (Fri. Sept. 12, 1997) -- Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana and Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina do not agree on much these days, despite their common Republican origins.

But they did agree on two things Thursday:

Tobacco farmers must be protected from the effects of a comprehensive settlement of lawsuits against cigarette makers.

The proposed $368.5 billion settlement, now being reviewed by Congress and the White House, will not fly as currently drafted.

"If Congress does pass tobacco legislation," Lugar said, "the needs of tobacco farmers should be taken into account."

At a hearing Thursday of his Senate Agriculture Committee, Lugar proposed a "reasonable but generous" buyout of the nation's 124,000 tobacco farmers, including about 8,600 in Indiana.

His plan, which has not been written into legislation, would pay farmers $8 per pound for their tobacco quotas. The federal government controls how much tobacco a farmer can sell per year. This amount is called his quota. Quotas can be rented, bought and sold like a physical commodity.

"Under a buyout, (a farmer) might continue to grow tobacco if he wished, but it would be subject to market swings," Lugar said. "The government should remove itself from the business of managing tobacco production.

"No doubt some farmers would like the current program to continue without change. It is not clear whether this is desirable or possible in the long term."

Lugar, Helms and other members of the agriculture panel, along with two former high-ranking public health officials, criticized the proposed tobacco settlement on a variety of grounds.

Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and David Kessler, former chief of the Food and Drug Administration, said the first aim of any settlement should be to curb smoking, especially among young Americans.

To further this goal, they called for increasing the federal tax on a pack of cigarettes by $1.50 to $2.

In addition, they proposed adding a 50-cents-per-pack penalty for cigarette makers whose brands do not decline in popularity among children, as called for in the settlement.

"A real price increase of $1.50 to $2 will cut smoking," Kessler said. "If it doesn't, then raise it until it does."

Negotiators for the tobacco industry and the state attorneys general involved in crafting the deal warned it is the best deal that could be had, and they urged that it be accepted.

"This represents the best we can do," said J. Phil Carlton, a lawyer from Raleigh, N.C., who represented tobacco companies during the negotiations. "We believe that $368.5 billion is the correct figure."

Helms said he believed the real aim of tobacco critics is to end all smoking, even by adults.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

	01/14/98- Updated 02:04 AM ET Smoke harms arteries permanently Smoking and breathing the smoke of others permanently damages arteries, putting both people exposed to secondhand smoke and those who quit long ago at risk of fatal diseases, a new study says. The study challenges the perception that those who stop smoking quickly regain health. Unlike some lung damage that heals fast, artery damage is not reversible, says a report in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association. "The message to young smokers is you will not get away without chronic" damage, says lead author George Howard of Wake Forest University School of Medicine. "The public health implications are vast," he says. "Nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke face about a third of the risk of smokers." Some hardening, called atherosclerosis, is a normal part of aging. But smoke damages a protective lining in the arteries early, exposing the fleshy walls to clingy plaque. Like an old drain pipe caked with gunk, plaque-hardened arteries are easily clogged. Obstructions can cause strokes and heart attacks. The three-year study examined the rate at which the carotid arteries hardened in 10,914 people in North Carolina, Maryland, Minnesota and Mississippi. Among findings: Ex-smokers' arteries hardened 25% faster than people who had never been exposed to smoke. The smokers had quit an average 10 years before. Nonsmokers who were regularly exposed to second-hand smoke suffered arterial damage 20% faster than those not exposed to any smoke. "For places like bars," he says, "this is very serious." Smokers' arteries hardened 50% faster than nonsmokers. By Robert Davis, USA TODAY ©COPYRIGHT 1998 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. Pictures Of Cigarette Packaging   Smoking and International Issues USA: The number 1 worldwide exporter of cigarettes !!!!! 118.5 billion in 1988 !!!!! 31% of the US crop is exported From 1954 to 1984 the food for peace program of the US Department of Agriculture included shipments of tobacco products to the hungry countries of the world... An amendment to section 301 of the 1974 trade act enlists the US Government to use or threaten trade sanctions against countries not permitting the sale of US tobacco products. Recently this was in active use against Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. Exported tobacco products are not required to comply with US standards for disclosure of tar and nicotine content, as well as quality control standards regarding concentrations of additives, herbicides and pesticides. Warning labels, restrictions on advertising and consumer protection from false representation do not apply to exported US made cigarettes. Brand names of exported cigarettes include long life, sportsman, life, prosperity island and new paradise. In Brazil the annual advertising budget for US cigarettes exceeds the country's national budget for health research. Asia is a rapidly growing market for tobacco companies and in China there are 10000 smoking related deaths per week!!! Advertising strategies for exported US cigarettes include sponsoring of sporting events, free samples, and free admission to discotheques in exchange for empty cigarette cartons . . . The US government allows tobacco companies to deduct 100% of their cigarette advertising costs for tax purposes.   Growth of the foreign market parallels the reduction in the domestic market: Cigarette consumption is on the decline in the US while marked increases have been noted in developing countries . . . - up 300% in Papua New Guinea - up 400% in India - up 33% in Africa, 24% in Latin America Increases in tobacco related diseases have been documented as well, with mortality from lung diseases up by 600% in India. As a crop, tobacco is the most widely grown non food crop in more than 120 countries. The US tobacco industry incites and aids farmers to start growing tobacco using tax deductible financial incentives, technical expertise, free seeds and fertilizers. An added incentive is their guarantee of short term profits from foreign exchange following the harvest. Despite gains from the employment of unskilled laborers and the generation of tax revenues, developing countries face long term losses from: - diversion of land resources away from food crops and grazing - health care costs from tobacco related illnesses - environmental damage due to pollution from fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides - losses of forests . . . wood smoke curing of tobacco requires 1 acre of forest to cure each acre of tobacco crop. Malawi has lost 1/3 of its trees to tobacco curing In Tanzania 12% of its trees are felled each year for curing The US government asks other governments to curb exports of cocaine and other substances of abuse while it directly and indirectly subsidizes a tobacco industry that causes more harm to society than all other known substances of abuse combined, even allowing for the loss of revenue from the underground economy and crime costs. Ownership of tobacco company stocks represents indirect endorsement of the industry's practices. Several prominent us hospitals and medical schools have been pressured to give up their investment holdings in the tobacco industry, thanks to individual and group efforts, notably through the American Medical Association. Aid in divestiture can be obtained through the Clean Indoor Air Educational Foundation: 617 266-6130 Other related links Tobacco Industry Information Tobacco Industry Political Expenditures Tobacco Industry's Economic Influence Tobacco Industry Targeting of Youth, Minorities and Women Some examples of sponsorship of sport and arts by tobacco Ending the exploitation of sport and arts to promote tobacco Worldwide trends in tobacco consumption and mortality Tobacco holdings of US Mutual Funds References A Blum; The marlboro grand prix; NEJM 1991; 324; 913-6 M Barry; The Influence of the US tobacco industry on the health, economy and environment of developing countries; NEJM 1991; 324; 917-20 Warner KE; The tobacco subsidy: does it matter?; J Natl Cancer Inst 1988; 80; 81-3 TD MacKenzie, CE Bartecchi, RW Schrier; The human costs of tobacco use; NEJM 1994; 330; 975-80 Posted at 9:40 p.m. EDT Tuesday, October 21, 1997 SAVING THE FARM U.S. tobacco growers' top priority is developing new markets abroad, not safeguarding foreign teens By NANCY STANCILL Staff Writer WILSON -- Robbie Webb, 13, picks up stray leaves as 19-year-old David Hawkins guides a harvester through a glistening field of tobacco. Farmer Doug Webb keeps a close eye on the two young workers as he pauses on a hot afternoon to talk about teen-age smoking. David, Webb's farm hand, has smoked for two years. Webb doesn't smoke and neither does his son, Robbie. As a lifelong tobacco grower, Webb is grateful that the overseas market for cigarettes is booming. As a parent, he doesn't approve of teen-age smoking -- anywhere. But he says he can't worry that his tobacco may end up in cigarettes smoked by adolescents overseas. ``If they don't get them from us, they'll get them somewhere else,'' the 43-year-old farmer says. ``Everybody has to play their cards for themselves.'' As Congress gears up for a lengthy debate on a proposed $368.5 billion tax-deductible tobacco settlement -- and how such a far-reaching pact might affect the rest of the world -- Carolinas farmers like Webb concentrate on surviving. ``I don't think they think very much about young kids in Manila smoking,'' says Ferrel Guillory, a UNC professor who studies tobacco farm issues for a Chapel Hill research firm. ``It's viewed as somebody else's problem.'' Guillory says farmers are preoccupied by uncertainties closer to home: the proposed settlement, the industry's shift abroad and how those momentous changes might affect them. ``Their world as they know it is collapsing around them,'' Guillory says. And while farmers search for ways to guarantee their long-term survival, anti-smoking politicians and health advocates are vowing that any U.S. settlement with the tobacco industry won't be at the expense of the world's young people. ``In agreeing to settle the lawsuits brought against them, the corporate nicotine dealers made sure that they retained full authority to provide a nicotine `fix' that hooks kids around the world to their deadly product,'' U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, charges. Phil Carlton, an N.C. lawyer representing the tobacco companies, says the U.S. tobacco settlement can't set policy -- but can be a model -- for the rest of the world. ``This Congress and President can't make laws for other countries,'' he notes, but says the industry is willing to discuss tobacco policy with any foreign government that asks. Doggett's bill, introduced in July and likely to be debated this fall, would require the same warning labels on exported cigarettes as the ones sold in the United States, ban federal spending to promote U.S. tobacco and urge President Clinton to help lead a United Nations effort to develop anti-smoking policies throughout the world. The Doggett legislation has kicked off a debate over the role and responsibilities of the U.S. government in the industry's overseas expansion that's likely to intensify as Congressional discussion over the proposed tobacco settlement picks up steam next spring. Some influential health advocates, including former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, have criticized U.S. trade policies of a decade ago which helped to open new markets for American cigarettes in Japan and other Asian countries. ``The federal government must not serve as an accomplice to big tobacco in the export of death, disease, and disability throughout the world,'' says Koop. Threats opened markets During the Reagan and Bush administrations, the U.S. Trade Representative's office used threats of economic sanctions to open the lucrative markets at the request of cigarette makers. But the office hasn't done that in the 1990s and its policy is to respect anti-smoking laws and policies passed by foreign governments, according to a U.S. trade official who asked not to be identified. International health advocates attending a worldwide anti-smoking conference held in Beijing in August strongly criticized the U.S. settlement plan, saying it proposes to reduce U.S. teen-age smoking at the expense of the young people in the rest of the world. They said the cost and restrictiveness of the proposed pact would unleash more expansion of U.S. companies to youth-driven markets overseas. Some N.C. members of Congress say there's not much they can do about foreign expansion of a legal product. U.S. Rep. Mel Watt, a Democrat from Charlotte, said he's opposed to teen-age smoking, but doesn't think a U.S. settlement can -- or should try to -- address worldwide concerns. He said he hasn't decided yet whether to support the settlement proposal. ``We don't have the authority to pass rules and regulations to govern other countries' citizens,'' said Watt. ``That doesn't mean that because we're silent that we're encouraging it to happen other places.'' U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge, who represents tobacco-growing counties in eastern North Carolina, says he's more concerned about other settlement issues, such as protecting tobacco farmers' livelihoods. ``It looks like the world market will continue to grow,'' he says. ``And as long as tobacco's a legal product, our farmers ought to have a part of it.'' Etheridge says he's also wary of restricting the tobacco industry's ability to expand abroad, because the cigarette makers may move more of their operations out of the tobacco-growing states. ``We have to be very careful about how we intend to meddle,'' he says. Anti-smoking advocates predict that worldwide concern over teen-age smoking will force Congress to include at least some funding for international anti-smoking programs if it approves a tobacco pact. Richard Daynard, who heads the Boston-based Tobacco Products Liability Project, predicted that Congress would be ``embarrassed'' enough by the omission to put something in the final version. Robert Weissman, who directs a corporate accountability organization affiliated with Ralph Nader, predicts that any pact approved by Congress will include money for United Nations anti-smoking programs. The World Health Organization's tobacco control activities have a budget of only about $1 million a year. Carlton says the tobacco industry in the proposed pact has agreed to allow the U.S. government to use an undetermined portion of settlement money to underwrite WHO activities. Some experts say they don't expect foreign issues to derail the settlement -- or to slow the pace of the move abroad. Jeff Omohundro, a tobacco analyst with Wheat First Securities in Richmond, Va., doubts that the international concerns will be a major issue as the pact is discussed. ``I think it's a nonstarter,'' says Omohundro. ``I'd be very surprised to see it gain enough momentum to slow these companies' international growth.'' Farmer groups comb world Meanwhile, tobacco farmers' representatives have been working on international issues of their own, trying to assure longterm business prospects. Kirk Wayne, president of Tobacco Associates Inc., a Washington-based trade organization funded by farmers in the Carolinas and three other tobacco-growing states, has combed the world in recent years, helping foreign tobacco companies find new ways to use American tobacco. Wayne's group has helped Turkey's national tobacco company develop a popular new cigarette, ``Tekel 2000,'' that's composed of 85 percent American flue-cured tobacco. The Carolinas, as two of the largest tobacco-growing states, stand to benefit greatly. Flue-cured tobacco is leaf cured slowly in specially heated barns. The Tobacco Associates' international marketing effort has an added advantage. Aimed at selling tobacco to foreign companies rather than cigarettes to the general public, it sidesteps much of the criticism directed at U.S. cigarette makers for using youth-oriented marketing techniques. ``I'm concerned about targeting kids,'' said Sonny Scott, a Wilson County farmer attending a tobacco auction in late summer. ``However, I still feel that we've got a legal product to sell.'' That's where Wayne comes in. He's exploring other potentially lucrative deals in Vietnam, China and other Asian countries that could substantially increase demand for U.S. tobacco. The goal is to lessen American farmers' dependence on U.S. cigarette makers by developing independent, foreign markets, he emphasized. As the market increasingly shifts away from the United States, tobacco farmers must make sure they have a growing piece of it, Wayne told a gathering of N.C. farmers a few months ago at their statewide meeting in Raleigh. More than half of the U.S. tobacco crop -- nearly $1 billion -- is sold to overseas buyers each year, he noted. Japan Tobacco is the single largest purchaser and Asia is the biggest export market, he said. ``We want to be there in a genuine, sincere, long-term approach,'' he said of the Asia market. Vietnam, Taiwan potential markets Tobacco Associates' development of the Tekel 2000 cigarette took 2 1/2 years of concentrated work with the Turkish company. But the success of the cigarette created ``our third largest export customer from zero,'' Wayne said. Now the trade group is trying to do the same thing in Vietnam and Taiwan by developing new brands with tobacco companies there. Another big project is scientific research aimed at convincing the China National Tobacco Co. to import U.S. tobacco. Currently, the China government doesn't allow American tobacco to be brought in, fearing that it will spread a U.S. plant disease called blue mold. Wayne said N.C. State University researchers are involved in a study to prove to the Chinese that blue mold can't be spread through cured leaves. It's Vietnam -- which reopened to U.S. trade in 1994 -- that has generated the most excitement among the growers' group. ``There's a growing demand for higher quality tobacco products there,'' Wayne told the N.C. farmers in March. He said Tobacco Associates has been working with Vinataba, the national tobacco company, on a new product. Farmers may be drawn into the debate over international issues as the proposed settlement gets more scrutiny next year. ``It's not only wrong to target children as new customers in the United States. It's wrong to do it internationally,'' said Lucinda Wykle-Rosenberg, research director for INFACT, a corporate watchdog based in Boston. ``Children are children, wherever they are.'' Randy Aycock, 44, a Wilson farmer with three young children, said he hopes his tobacco doesn't end up in cigarettes smoked by teen-agers -- anywhere. But he said responsibility begins at home. ``Whether young people smoke or not is up to their parents,'' he said. ``If they start smoking, that's parents being lazy.'' Doug Webb said he'll keep growing and selling his tobacco -- and hoping that son Robbie won't find it appealing. He said there's little that he can do to stop his own teen, much less the world's teens, from smoking. ``It's going to be his decision,'' Webb said. CARING FOR CHILDREN AUGUST 25, 1997 TRANSCRIPT An estimated 10 million children have no medical insurance. How will the $24 billion provision in the balanced budget deal insure that children don't fall through health care's cracks? After this backgrounder by Kwame Holman, Elizabeth Farnsworth explores the issue with two health care experts. KWAME HOLMAN: One of the major provisions in the balanced budget bill President Clinton signed this month was a $24 billion program to provide health insurance to uninsured children. PRESIDENT CLINTON: Because we have acted millions of children all across this country will be able to get medicine and have their sight and hearing tested and see dentists and doctors for the first time. KWAME HOLMAN: The Census Bureau estimates 10 million children in the United States have no health insurance. The vast majority are in low to moderate income families, who earn just a little too much qualify for Medicaid. Nearly a third are children eligible for Medicaid but who have not been enrolled. According to health experts, uninsured children seldom get any medical care until they become sick enough to be brought to a hospital emergency room. The President first suggested a child health care plan in his State of the Union address in January. He asked Congress for $16 billion to cover children through a combination of private insurance and expanding the Medicaid program. Then Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch and Democrat Edward Kennedy introduced a bill that would give states block grants to insure children. SEN. ORRIN HATCH, (R) Utah: Parents should not have to decide whether to buy health insurance for their children or put food on the table. KWAME HOLMAN: But the Hatch-Kennedy bill also took the controversial step of funding children’s health insurance through an increase in the federal cigarette tax from 24 to 43 cents per pack. President Clinton ultimately embraced that funding mechanism. And it was included in his budget agreement with congressional Republicans announced May 2nd. Meanwhile, taxing tobacco to fund children’s health insurance drew support from a coalition of 250 groups, ranging from the Children’s Defense Fund to the Girl Scouts of America. In nationwide radio and newspaper ads the groups called on members of Congress to choose between Joe Camel and four-year-old Joey. AD SPOKESPERSON: I also heard about a plan by Republicans and Democrats that would mean coverage for all uninsured children. It’s paid for by a 43 cent cigarette tax, so children get health care and fewer teenagers smoke. KWAME HOLMAN: Several key Republican leaders in Congress initially were cool to tobacco taxes but gradually support for the idea grew. In June, the Senate passed a $24 billion child health insurance plan funded in part by a 20 cents a pack increase in the cigarette tax. PRESIDENT CLINTON: Let me say that this 20-cent increase in the cigarette tax not only will provide necessary resources to protect and improve children’s health. By raising the price of cigarettes it will discourage children from starting to smoke in the first place. KWAME HOLMAN: When the final budget agreement was signed into law this month, it included the $24 billion over the next five years for children’s health insurance funded in part by a 15 cent per pack increase in the cigarette tax. Under the new law states would be given the money in block grants and would design their own child health insurance programs. But states would be required to offer children enrollment in one of the following: the state Medicaid program, a plan equivalent to a major private insurer’s or a government employee’s health plan, or a direct service contract with doctors and hospitals. House panel releases 39,000 tobacco documents (Updates with comments from Lott) By Joanne Kenen WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House Commerce Committee Wednesday released a trove of nearly 39,000 cigarette company documents charting decades of what anti-smoking forces have called the tobacco industry's ``war with the truth.'' Although it will take some time for lawyers, scientists and Congressional policymakers to digest the mass of documents, initial samplings found evidence that at least some of the companies had destroyed or concealed damaging health research. Some research was also done overseas, particularly in Germany. The documents also show that lawyers played a clear role in guiding researchers, setting parameters for their projects and teaching them how to avoid ``sensitive'' information in their written reports, a process that one 1985 Reynolds Tobacco document referred to as ``wordsmithing.'' That document also said that after the landmark 1964 surgeon general's report on smoking and cancer came out, the legal department ``did influence research objectives to a degree because the lawyers did not want anyone performing research that would appear to acknowledge that cigarettes or cigarette smoke contained harmful constituents or posed a health problem.'' Cigarette companies had gone to the Supreme Court to keep the papers secret, but they failed to convince the courts that the papers were protected by attorney-client privilege. Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas Bliley, a Virginia Republican, obtained them by subpoena on April 6 and put them on the committee's Internet site (http://www.house.gov/commerce). ``Congress, the president and the American people need this information before we enact tobacco legislation,'' Bliley said. The documents have also been made available to the state of Minnesota for use in its $1.77 billion lawsuit against the tobacco industry. Lawyers have been able to introduce some in the trial, but the state has not been allowed to release all of them to the general public. ``Tobacco lawyers, not scientists, were the gatekeepers controlling research on smoking and health and blocking important health research that could have saved lives,'' Minnesota Attorney General Hubert ``Skip'' Humphrey said. ``Their conduct was not only unprofessional and illegal, it was unethical and morally reprehensible.'' A 1959 letter from the Council on Tobacco Research, an industry umbrella group, addressed ``the alleged relationship of cigarette smoking to lung cancer.'' ``As you may know it is the view of our own scientific advisers that it has not been proven that tobacco use contributes to the origin of cancer, notwithstanding the statistical associations that have been cited,'' it said. More recent documents, written as the anti-tobacco movement gained strength in 1994, showed the industry's attempt to rally scientists who could take on research published by the American Medical Association. A Dec. 15, 1994, tobacco council letter talks about the AMA having a ``political'' agenda, not a scientific one, and a Brown and Williamson letter written that September talked of ``finding the right person to review the AMA abstracts.'' It is too soon to know what impact their release will have on Congress's consideration of tobacco legislation. Earlier batches of documents, particularly papers tracing how the industry pitched cigarettes to teen-agers and minorities, have contributed to growing anti-tobacco sentiment in Congress. Tobacco legislation is very much in flux right now. A bill pending in the Senate drafted by Arizona Republican John McCain faces intense industry opposition. Some Republicans, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich, have also weighed in against a bill that he says is liberal and bureaucratic. Gingrich this week suggested a bill against illegal drugs could also contain measures against teen-age smoking, but he has said various things about smoking legislation over the past months, and the House has not yet produced a bill. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican, said Wednesday he is concerned about the cost and bureaucracy in the McCain bill but he denied reports that he had decided to jettison it in favor of a scaled back bill. But Lott said the outlook for tobacco legislation remains very uncertain, and could still ``melt down'' but that he thought the ``odds are'' that the Senate would choose a more comprehensive approach than the House. Previous batches of documents have heightened anti-tobacco sentiment in Congress and made lawmakers extremely reluctant to grant the industry any protections from future lawsuits. Without that protection, the industry this month broke off attempts to negotiate a tobacco bill on its terms and instead began campaigning against legislation as representing ``big government'' and ``big taxes.'' The papers are from Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., a unit of B.A.T Industries Plc of Britain, Philip Morris Cos. Inc., R.J. Reynolds, a division of RJR Nabisco Holding Corp., and Lorillard Tobacco Co., a division of Loew's Corp., and two tobacco industry umbrella organizations. ^REUTERS@ Reut19:40 04-22-98 (22 Apr 1998 19:40 EDT) New bipartisan US House tobacco bill unveiled By Joanne Kenen WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bipartisan group of House members Wednesday unveiled a tobacco bill that was immediately praised by public health groups and the White House but did not gain any immediate support from House Republican leaders. The bill by Utah Republican James Hansen and Massachusetts Democrat Martin Meehan would raise cigarette prices by $1.50 a pack over three years. It would raise more than $500 billion over 25 years and about 10 percent of the money would go to anti-smoking programs. A third would go to the states and the rest would help pay down the $3.8 trillion national debt. The bill would provide the tobacco industry with no protection against any lawsuits. Its sponsors also hope to skirt the political battles over how to spend the hundreds of billions that would be generated by a tobacco bill, and instead put the focus back on teenage smoking. The goal is cutting teen smoking by 80 percent in 10 years. ``This is comprehensive tobacco legislation that has one and only one objective: protecting public health,'' said California Democrat Henry Waxman. At a news conference the bill's authors acknowledged they do not now have the crucial backing from the House leadership, but said they already have about 15 co-sponsors from across the political spectrum and they want to keep building support. ``There is momentum, and a groundswell,'' said Hansen. ``We have to let this play out.'' House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other top Republicans have not embraced any tobacco bill and have criticized most of the measures that have been proposed. Gingrich says he hopes to include some anti-smoking measures in a bill later this year to combat illegal drug use. The Senate is tentatively slated to take up in two weeks a bill drafted by Sen. John McCain, which also has bipartisan support. But although McCain himself is a conservative Republican from Arizona, his bill has been bitterly attacked by Gingrich and other prominent Republicans. President Clinton in a statement commended Hansen and Meehan for ``putting together a strong bipartisan comprehensive tobacco bill designed to reduce youth smoking in this country.'' The bill meets four of the White House's five goals on tobacco legislation, omitting only aid to tobacco farmers. Clinton said he wanted to work with them on the farmer issue, although Hansen said he would prefer to keep the bill simple and address the farmers' needs separately. In addition to the price increase, the bill would give the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco and nicotine and to restrict marketing and advertising within Constitutional limits. The bill would let the tobacco companies decide how to reduce teen smoking, but they would face additional price increases and advertising and marketing restrictions if they failed to meet those goals. It also includes restrictions on environmental tobacco smoke, often called ``second-hand smoke,'' and would create an international code of conduct barring U.S. tobacco companies and their foreign affiliates from marketing to children in other countries in ways that would not be acceptable in the United States. Leading public health groups and anti-smoking advocates, including the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association, praised the bill. Former FDA chief David Kessler and former U.S. Surgeon General Everett Koop in a statement praised the sponsors for rising ``above the political squabble to put public health first.'' ``Only when Congress stops using tobacco policy as a wrestling match over unrelated political issues will it be possible to produce tough, useful tobacco legislation,'' they said. ^REUTERS@ Reut14:11 05-06-98 (06 May 1998 14:10 EDT)

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